The Grenada gazette. (Grenada, Miss.) 1885-18??, 1887-05-21
THE IA AND THE HEN.
Some Of the Joys of Poultry-Keeping Not
Described by Agricultural Papers.

Some Of the Joys OF Pou,try-Keeping Not
Described by Agricultural Papers.
Your mission is to make the world
about you u little brighter and hap
pier. If you haven't thought of any
other way of doing this permit me to
suggest, if you have a little place in
the country, that you should keep hens.
By all means keep hens. l don't keep
any myself: l am rather fond of easy
missions. But my neighbor does, and
the amount of sunshine that man
throws across my daily path would be
hard to estimate. Many an hour that
would otherwise drag heavily away IS
lightened with smiles by the amusing
and at times thrilling and exciting
drama of 1.-THE Man and the Hen" To
watch him come out Of the house to
drive an old brown hen into the hem
nery-I made up my mind that she
was an old imbecile the first time |
saw her fly up on the fence to lay an
egg-to note the delicate shadings of
thought and action, from easy. grace
full confidence to sober earnestness,
thence into calmness, then to serious
ness that deepened into dead earnest
ness. which passes into deep-rooted and
eternal resolution, with indications of
conscientious Indignation, giving place
to i%rritability and human anger, which
in turn and a tlast sweeps away into one
wild, chaotic cyclone of blind and de-
structive wrath that darkens the April
day with bricks, clods and other lam
guage, as the old brown hen, a mag
nificent blur Of squawks and feathers.
goes banging with a cloud Of dust into
every door and window on the reserva-
ton except the II to which her at
tention is being most earnestly direct
ed-to sit at the easement of my Lair
and watch the instructive drama OF life
and its varied possibilities. in reading
one Of these dear. old. ever new books
that we love. Most of my neighbour
hens appear to be feeble-minded
very few hens are intellect
ually strong-but at times they
display the cunning of the maniac
Especially is this apt to be the case
when they have succeeded in reducing
their nominal master to the condition
of me-. Yesterday my neighbor dis
covered q loose board on the back of
his hcnnery, creating an adjustable
aperture through which the restless
fowls found egress into this world Of
care and trouble and early gardens.
While he nailed on the board the entire
crew Of hens walked scdately out of the
door on the other side which he had
left open. A general alarm was sound
cd and the mans whole family at last
corraled the maudlin crew in the hen.
merry. Then they walked quietly out Of
the aperture of the loose board, which
he had left ajar. No, l do not wish you
could have heard what he said. Indeed.
l am glad you did not. l did not hear
it myself. He was too far away. l
could see his mouth going, but l could
hear no sound. l knew what he was
saying all the time. because l used to
say it myself. Oh, yes. l have kept
hens. l once, in radiant, hopeful
days. builded q hennery. saying within
myself: ''There is nothing better for a
man than that he should eat and drink
and that he should make his soul en-
JOY good in his labor" And when the
last sun Of that year set on the dis
h~cartening record Of weasels, pip,
cholera, rats, red spiders, gapes, cats.
predatory freedmen. humblefoot and
ministers conference, l evicted the
cluster of omnivorous appetites that
wande red about the place in the guise
of hens, devouring my substance and
all adjacent substance that happened
to b. left anywhere within fifty feet Of
the ground; turned the abandoned hen.
ucry into a preserve for coal, which
was the dearest thing then in the mar
kct, and "looked OF all the works that
my hands had wrought, and on the
labor that | had labored to do, and,
behold. all was vanity aud vexation Of
spirit and there was no profit under
the sun.'-Robert J. Burdette, in
Brooklyn Eagle.
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